Zack Snyder teases a Seven Samurai-inspired Justice League movie

Whatever your opinion of Batman v Superman, possibly the most divisive comic book movie to arrive in recent years, the future of the DC Extended Universe hinges on one thing. Cold hard cash. Already the film's scooped up $27 million domestically during Thursday night previews and netted $20 million in China. All that talk about the Justice League film getting canned is probably a little premature.

Even if it has been axed, no-one at Warner has told director Zack Snyder. He's already prepping for the two-parter that begins shooting in April, telling Yahoo that the film will be "an intense, awesome, and gigantic undertaking." Sounds an awful lot like his descriptions of BvS, but the big difference here is that Justice League revolves around uniting several of DC's heroes into one mega-team.

"Bruce [Wayne] is having to go out and sort of Seven Samurai the Justice League together, which is fun," he adds, "It’s slightly monumental, and at the same time they’re starting to grapple with this coming threat.” That's pretty lofty comparison to draw. Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is a revered classic about a bunch of samurai who join together to fight off bandits who've been terrorising a small village. We can assume that Snyder's referring to that overall premise (and not the actual samurai) which begs the question, what's the coming threat?